He was also an evil dictator who silenced any and all opposition. And you can't argue that his political philosophy works either---just look at Cuba today.
That he was a dictator is uncontroversial. The word 'evil' in this context is probably meaningless. Cuba's trajectory through world history under Castro is in turns tragic, heroic, idealistic, and cynical.
The comment you are replying to is embracing that complexity. Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth.
I am no fan of the shape Fidel Castro's Cuba took, but I think it is more important that we learn from the mistakes of the revolution (which are not a simple matter of being 'evil' or 'wrong') than that we demonize them.
In general, we should learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
>Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth.
I honestly agree.
I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out.
>I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out.
Were they given the chance (cold war, embargo, et al)?
But it sort of helps that the other biggest country is doing the opposite. Of course, it gets complicated when that country stops existing - in the case of Soviet Union, that was in 1993, IIRC.
These are important lessons, and very well expressed--better than I could say it. I just want to add that I wish more of us felt this way. Everyone community online I find it seems the emotional knee-jerk reaction is very prevalent in the way we think about politics, and I don't see the maturity expressed in this comment very often.
Cuba has been under embargos for decades. You can't blame the current situation on Castro alone. That's like saying the reason your pizza shop was burned to the ground was because you paid protection money to the wrong mafia, and it was the other one that really controlled your neighbourhood.
Cuba can buy absolutely anything it needs - even American products - simply by going through any one of a myriad of interlocutors: Mexico, Canada, Jamaica, Venezuela.
There is absolutely no forgiving Fidel's cruel dictatorship.
US embargo means a lot, not just unable to buy stuff easily. Let's not pretend that US was not the world cop. The embargo definitely has negative impact on Cuba economy.
I fully sympathize with that fact and it's correct.
Just as I understand there is some Cuban goodwill with respect to the doctors they send abroad - and early on Fidel's creation of better literacy/healthcare programs.
But remember this: Fidel worked with the Russians to put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from the USA - and created a crazy situation - the closest the world has ever been to full blown nuclear war. That was this man's hubris - he nearly helped put the world on fire. That kind of existential threat is not easily forgotten. Point being: the 'embargo' is 100% Fidel's fault, and he could have easily taken steps to have it removed, but his ego would not allow it.
> Fidel worked with the Russians to put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from the USA
That's after US did the same to Russia and failed invasion of Cuba.
“In response to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, and the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter future harassment of Cuba.” [1]
You may want to read [2], which was posted on HN before. In short, US was a real bully back then. Anything did by Cuba and USSR were mostly reactive knee-jerking response to the aggressive stance of US.
"reactive knee-jerking response to the aggressive stance of US."
It was a response to the Cuban revolution, which was Communist, and 'Soviet inspired' from day one - a global movement which was threatening the entire world.
As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that's not true. As a simple counterexample, Air Canada flies to Cuba and does business with US companies/individuals just fine.
I'm not an expert on the embargo, and it's a bit complicated because it's got multiple pieces of enabling legislation, but at first glance the only one of those that says anything close to what you're saying is Title III of the Helms-Burton act (see http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/... for full text). That explicitly allows companies "trafficking in property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government on or after January 1, 1959", if it was confiscated from a United States national, to be sued in US courts. This obviously only matters to companies doing business in the US, because otherwise they don't care whether they get sued to start with. Note also that certain forms of real estate are excluded from the provisions of this law, again at first glance.
Am I just missing something? Do you have a citation for your claim?
The same happened with MasterCard and VISA, and is part of the reason why I think Germany should continue to keep its own payment system, and just ban MasterCard and VISA and PayPal within the EU.
Or that you can’t technically put apps on the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store if you trade with Cuba.
The Reddit discussion references the Helms-Burton act, and for the case of things like banks and payment processors, I expect the problem is Title I section 103, which prohibits US nationals from extending loans or other financing to anyone for the purpose of financing transactions involving confiscated property as defined elsewhere in the act.
So for the cigar case, if the cigars were grown on land that was confiscated (for example), my reading of it is that processing a payment for the cigars would be prohibited under the act. Certainly so for MasterCard and Visa, which are clearly extending credit.
That's not the same as a blanket ban on both doing business with Cuba and business with US companies, but it does make things very complicated, I agree, especially because there are so many ways of extending credit when companies deal with each other.
> you can't argue that his political philosophy works either---just look at Cuba today.
As someone who studied the subject formally, don't place maximum weight on the success and failures of the (statistically insignificant) rise and fall of modern nation states. This is a very far cry from a controlled experiment to begin with, anyways.
Don't read into that too much. I'm not saying mainstream economics doesn't have compelling arguments to make about the elegant effectiveness of free (properly regulated) markets. I'm just trying to be fair: it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
There is not even such thing. There exists no major economy in modern history which is either 100% planned or 100% "free market" (anarchist).
Well anyways, the objective fact here is that Cuba is objectively richer and more successful than some nearby economies that have had more right wing influence in nearby Central America.
>it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such a form can exist without a centrally planned economy, I'm all ears.
Marxism has failed and failed and then failed again, and then it also led to the deaths of 100 million.
You seem to have a very wrong idea of what Marxism is, means, and argues. You also seem to have a deep-seated and emotional hatred for it. That's all well and good, but perhaps you should lay off discussing it. You keep getting all worked up here, which you perhaps would be able to avoid if you had a better understanding of what Marxism is, what it means, what it argues, what it predicts. You're continuing to behave in an insulting manner toward people, calling names, and making antagonistic, simplistic, blanket statements that evince no nuance of understanding.
For a concrete example, someone who is interested cannot really respond to you if they wanted to because you're firing in every direction with very little detail or explanation. How is anyone supposed to guess at what you consider to be the "benefits yielded by capitalism"? What socialism "of such a form" do you mean? Why do you seem blind to the many "dumb" parts of capitalism or liberal democracy? Do you study the various alternatives that have been discussed in the history of political science and theory? What specifically do you find dumb about Marxism, particularly as compared with its counterparts in other economic models and interpretations of human history?
On HN, you'll find emotional, knee-jerk reactions receive a swift, negative response. Especially when they're negative emotions, delivered with insults and anger. You can do much better than this, and you'll find interesting conversations coming your way.
